The Sense in the Songs
by Tallielle
Summary: This is post-ALWAYS, and will most likely be a fic composed of one shots based upon how Beckett and Castle spend their summer. Each episode is based on a song, if you have any songs to suggest for a chapter, let me know! Definitely finale spoilers here.
1. In my Veins

_This is post-Always...more serious and more in depth than my little smorelet fic. I wonder if they will ever address this little phrase on the show? As per usual I DO NOT own Castle...ABC and AM have the rights to the wonderful show that we all love so much. Please R and R! I will update this at least once a week. _

"_**Everything is dark**_

_**It's more than you could take**_

_**But you catch a glimpse of sunlight**_

_**Shining**_

_**Shining down on your face**_

_**Your face**_

_**On your face**_

_**Oh, you're in my veins, and I cannot get you out**_

_**Oh, you're all I taste, at night inside of my mouth**_

_**Oh, you run away, cause I am not what you found**_

_**Oh, you're in my veins, and I cannot get you out." ~Andrew Belle**_

That moment on the ledge had been a revelation, it had busted her soul wide open so it lay broken open as an egg, all of her truths finally laid bare for her own previously blind eyes to see, to drink in, to comprehend. In the moments that she had thought were her last, every bone, every fiber, every pump of blood in her body had yearned for him, had screamed his name. She urgently needed to let him know how she felt. How stupid she had been, how consumed by her own purpose that she hadn't been able to accept the very thing she needed the most-his love. He was her one and done. Her always. She couldn't let him slip through the cracks in her life that her own rabbit hole had created.

She was calm when they pulled her up from the ledge; outwardly. Inside of her turmoil, confusion, anger and sadness swirled and raged like a violent maelstrom and a sick feeling curled into the top of her chest. She had hurt him and she needed to make it right.

In Gates' office she had stared at her badge lovingly and felt the pull it still had for her and a soft stab of slight panic at the thought of giving it up. But then she had made a decision. That badge was her previous reality. Everything she had ever identified herself with had become wrapped up in that job. Who was she without that piece of brass? She smiled when she put it down, things she had never felt before bubbling and swirling and popping inside of her. She was Kate Beckett-remarkable, maddening, challenging, frustrating. Had he really said that?

"Keep it,. I resign."

She dodged the disbelieving looks of her chief and her friend and packed up her desk, casting one last look at Castle's chair before crashing out into the torrential storm, letting it soak her through, wash away her sins, her past.

The rain spun down like small silver knives and stung when it hit her bare skin, reminding her that she was still alive and whole and...in love.

Oh God, was she in love! Her chest tightened and burned with it and she let herself cry bitter tears in the heavy rain, salt and silt staining her flaming cheeks.

She went to the swing set where she had almost told him that it was him, it was always ALWAYS him, so many months ago. Her eyes drifted over to the empty seat beside her and a chasm of need opened up in her heart and threatened to swallow her whole. She needed him, she missed him, she loved him. She needed to fix what she had broken. She laughed to herself in the rain and ran a hand through her sopping hair, then pressed her slender cold fingers into her cheeks. All of the feelings she had fought so long against surged up in her and spilled out. She pictured him... his boyish smile, his brilliant eyes, his beautiful lips. She thought about what it would like to never see him again, to never hear his glimmering laugh or see the warm glimmer that sparked in his eyes when he looked at her. It was then she made a decision to run into it, confront love head on. She knew it would be messy and frustrating and imperfect, but the things that were worth the most always were. This, this would make up for all the times she had held back, for all the things she had never said, for all the mistakes she had ever made. She got up slowly from the swing and gave his a last push before hitting the pavement in an all out run to his apartment.

She paused in front of his building, gun shy for only a moment. What if he didn't open the door? What if he refused to talk to her? And the last what if was the hardest for her, the one that made the scar over her heart smart and burn...What if he had decided not to love her anymore?

_No what ifs, Kate. The time is now._

And it was. She took out her phone and dialed his number to tell him she was coming up. Coming for him.

He didn't answer. Had she really expected him to?

It didn't matter. Nothing mattered anymore except that she got to him. Touched him. Felt him. Showed him.

The doorman let her in without a backwards glance, thank god she had been her so many times before and that Castle had put her on the _always_ admit list or she wouldn't have had a prayer of getting in, especially now that she was gun and badge-less.

Her nerves vibrated with raw electricity as she took the elevator up to his floor, and the wait she endured until the doors clicked open and ejected her into the familiar hallway felt like an eternity.

She knocked on the door desperately, wishing silently that she could tear it down to get to him and lay herself bare.

When he opened the door and she met his familiar, wonderful gaze, all of her slowly rehearsed words died on her lips. There would be no poetic declarations this night, she could barely even breathe. She looked at him and opened her mouth to say

something, but nothing came out and she shook her head against how small and panicked his apparent anger made her feel.

He was stern and cold-detached. But his eyes, his beautiful, soulful eyes were still sad and bewildered, despite their stony set.

"Beckett, what do you want?"

Oh God, he was going to write her off. She couldn't let that happen, so she just told the truth. She was done hiding her feelings from him, from the world. The word popped out before she had even fully made her decision.

"You." And it _was_ the naked, honest truth. The truth of all truths. All she had _ever_ wanted was him.

And then she reached for him, drove him back from the door and kissed him with tentative abandon, an apology and a question on her lips. She clung to him then,...this man was her constant, her anchor in the swirling stormy waters her life had become. He was her beacon in the darkness, everything she needed and she needed him now more than ever.

She felt his shock, and his hesitation, his disbelief. She drew back, her hands still on his face and whispered to him the second truth she had for him, the only thing that made sense.

"I'm so sorry, Castle. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry." Her voice was low and ghost-like, filled with heartbreak and raw, sharp edged emotion. His heart seized in his chest and as she leaned into kiss him again he had to take a deep breath before tearing her away. Surely this was a dream, surely...

She gave him a desperate, hurt look when he pushed her back and he couldn't help but notice that the pain in her eyes was tinged with desire and pure, unadulterated need.

She had brought the storm in with her and transferred it into him with one touch of her tingling lips. It raged inside of him, a hodge-podge of emotion. She had just rocked him to his very core, and he had to recover from the shock of seeing her so vulnerable and broken-open before him, begging for him, for his love. It took him a moment to catch his breath and form the words that he so wanted to come.

"What happened?"

She looked down, trying to compose herself in order to find the right thing to say to convey her revelation to him. A tear leaked down her face and she raised her head to meet his eyes again, somehow confident, happy to be sharing her heart with him, her realization. It was something she had needed to get off of her chest for a while and the moment was now. Something in her tingled with white-hot tiny pinpricks. She was acutely aware that they were both dangling over a precipice, about to fall and embark on a new journey. This was to be her reality, their reality.

_He_ was her reality.

"He got away, and I didn't care." She paused for a moment, searching his eyes to see if he fully grasped what she was trying to say. Then she soldiered forward. "I am almost died." Her voice was almost robbed from her here, and he could hear its thinness and feel her fighting with the emotion to wrestle out her words.

"And all I could think about was you." She took in his lips and his face, drinking him in with her hurt-bright eyes.

"I just want you."

The weak wall that he had tried to erect around his heart, the resolution he had made to himself to be rid of her, all of it crumbled and disappeared in that moment and a chasm of need for her opened up wide and gaping inside of him. Every inch of him wanted to show her how he loved her, with his hands, his lips, his eyes his body.

She leaned in to invite him into her and then stopped short of kissing him before raising her eyes to him to see what he would do next. She touched his beautiful lips before she saw a conflagration of desire and love ignite behind his wonderful blue eyes. He tightened his grip upon her waist a drove her backwards into the door, slamming it shut behind them. Her whole body exploded with a flash of heat. She felt a trickle of sweat run in between her breast and pool around the white pit of her scar. His touch upon her face was both gentle and firm and his hands were more sandpapery than expected. She imagined the roughness of them sliding deliciously along a smooth expanse of her smarting skin and her longing grew deeper. His lips connected with hers in a flash of lightening and he tasted sorrow-salt and fire, and the ghost of a smile. She felt him pulling her in and redeeming her and she had a fleeting thought that now she new what it felt like to be saved. He was filling her darkness with his light.

Her hips involuntarily rose to meet his and she felt the effect that it had on him, the tightening of muscles and sinew, the waves of unbearable heat rolling off of him and crashing into her. Their kisses became desperate and deep; a passionate declaration of all the things they'd almost said. They parted briefly and unison, like two swimmers surfacing for a brief snatch of air. Then he leaned down and kissed the smooth, rain-slick column of her throat, then the shadowy divot where her collarbone fused. He moved back up to kiss the corner of her mouth, a place he used to imagine she saved all her sweetest kisses. She threw her hands up around him, drawing him into her; her skin flushed with the heat of anticipation. His mouth was on hers again and again and again, worshipping her with hot and wordless prayers and she felt as if their clothes might turn to ash between them.

_Oh. My. God._

He kissed the sensitive expanse behind her ear and then trailed his lips down her breasts to place a gentle, incredulous kiss upon the cavity that housed her wildly beating heart.

He opened her shirt and she caught his hand, guiding it to the hard pebble of her scar so he could feel every beat of the heart that was his.

_This is yours. This is yours. This is yours. _

She reached up and drew him into a kiss so tender he thought his heart might shatter. He couldn't help but think how perfectly their mouths fit together, how she fit into his arms like she was always meant to be there.

He had just needed to catch his upper lip against hers and he felt her a smile start to curl it's way into her kiss. When they broke apart his heartbeat answered hers.

_Always, always, always._

The smile that had began in the kiss grew into a brilliant grin and he watched it break like dawn over her face before she reached down to firmly take his hand.

Everything was changing and he was ready.

He had always been ready.

She looked at him with a question, a coy and alluring glint in the swirling dark waters of her eyes. He felt her expel a quivering breath before she drew her bottom lip in between her perfect teeth and tugged gently on his hand.

_Come with me. _She asked him again with her eyes. He didn't need to be asked twice.

* * *

She gives herself to him with more fervor and wanton than she ever has given herself to anyone before.

He takes her in and explores ever inch of her gorgeous rain-soaked skin with his spry writer's hands.

She has bewitched him body and soul and he love, love, loves her.

He tells her this with silent lips pressed reverently to her coal-hot skin, with his tender caresses, his emotion-pregnant glances.

Her hands rove the expanse of his back, brush against the valleys of his clavicle, work up between the smooth plane between his shoulder blades. She wants her palms to feel him, to memorize every inch of his magnificent body.

They rise and fall like a boat in the tide, the slopes and angles of their body meeting and parting and meeting again.

With every gasping breath she finds that she needs him more. He has dug his way under her skin and crawled through her veins into her heart. Every beat sings his name.

And nothing has ever felt more whole, more perfect, more right.

And for the first time in a long time, Kate Beckett feels like she is home.


	2. The First day of my Life

"_**This is the first day of my life**_

_**I swear I was born right in the doorway**_

_**I went out in the rain suddenly everything changed." ~Bright Eyes**_

When she wakes up she feels his glance sliding across the expanse of the love tangled sheets, and softly knocking on her closed eyelids. She opens her eyes slowly and meets his gaze with a smile bright one, her happiness reaching her eyes and making the laugh lines by her eyes that he loves so much spring to life.

They lay there like that for a breathless moment, the rain now beating a soft love-song on the window-pane. He watches the slivers of twilight slant across her skin as she moves over to him and brings a delicate hand up to cup his face.

"Hi." She says in a low and sleepy-heavy tone painted with hints of unbearable happiness.

"Hi". He parrots back, reaching up a large hand to place on top of hers as he turns to kiss her palm.

"Mmm." She sighs and nudges herself closer to him, tucking her head into his shoulder.

He trails a hand down her back, still incredulous that he is allowed to touch her, feel her, love her...still unbelieving of everything that has just transpired. He splays his hand against her spine starts to brush slow and lazy circles on her back.

She raises his eyes to his again and he delights in the adoring way they drink him in.

"When I was a girl, my mother taught me a phrase in every language." She's quiet, serious. He leans into her words. She looks down at the hand she's placed upon his heart and then dives into the oceans of his eyes again. "I want to share them with you."

She brushes a thumb over his chin and kisses him gently.

"Te amo." She whispers to his lips.

_Spanish._

She brushes feather-light kisses up his jaw line until she reaches one of his ears and cups it like a seashell.

"Je t'aime." She breathes it into his ear like a gentle breeze.

_French._

She drops her nose to his left pectoral and places a ghost-light kiss over his heart.

"Volim Te."

_Croatian._

Castle feels his heart squeezing and tightening, then expanding in his chest make room for the enormity of her love. He is so in awe of this woman and he still can't believe she is his.

She grabs his free hand and places a sweet kiss into his palms and then pecks the tips of each of his fingers.

"S'agapo."

_Greek._

It is for all the almost-times, the times that she has felt it and tamped it back down into her pandora's box of untouchable things. Even last night she hadn't been able to verbalize it. But now, in the pre-dawn glow, she feels the need to tell him in every language her mother had taught it to her in.

She drifts back up to his shoulder and presses her warm, love swollen lips into its smooth curve.

"Ich liebe dich."

_German._

She brands his neck with a lightening quick kiss that sends a chill dancing down his spine like droplets of icy rain.

"Ti amo."

_Italian._

She comes back up and raises a glance to him the stops him in his tracks and elegantly steals his breath. She catches the corner of his mouth in a searing kiss and draws back to pin him with her dizzying gaze again. He feels so full up with the gravity of the moment that he might burst.

"I love you."

_English._

She winds her fingers through his and presses her hand over her scar yet again and brings her lips to brush the tip of his nose.

"Always." She exhales and the next question he asks just so he can hear the answer.

"What language does that mean I love you in?"

She presses her forehead to his.

"Ours."


	3. To Make you Feel My Love

**A/N: WOW! Thanks everybody for the response to this! I love your reviews and your song suggestions will be used somewhere along the line since they are perfect. I might post the Nikki Heat playlist to my Tumblr, let me know if you want it and I will let you know how to get it in the next chapter! I had writer's block with this one, so I put on the song and wrote. I don't think it is as good as the first two installments, but here it is! Enjoy and please R and R.**

"_**The storms are raging**_

_**On the rolling sea**_

_**And on the highway of regret**_

_**The winds of change**_

_**Are blowing wild and free**_

_**You ain't seen nothing**_

_**Like me yet." ~Lyrics by Bob Dylan, as sung by Adele**_

The next time he wakes up he feels the distinct lack of her presence in the bed next to him and a sick sense of panic runs around and settles on his heart. Had it all been just a beautiful dream?

He shoots up and rubs the sleep dust from his bleary eyes, his breathing ragged. The wild beating of his heart thrums in the royal of his veins and then abruptly calms.

She's there. On the edge of his bed in one of his oxford shirts, colored in both shadows and darkness by the slants of early morning like that are trickling through his blinds. She is contemplating something with a tender and wondrous written into her gorgeous features and he almost doesn't want to interrupt the moment.

He crawls across the bed to press a kiss right above the collar of his shirt and he feels her relax and sag against him.

He pops his head over her shoulder and stops to whisper something in her ear.

"I am glad it wasn't a dream."

And oh, oh, oh her heart is breaking for him in her chest, breaking for the fact that he loves her that much, the he has **loved** her that much for such a long time now.

She turns to meet his gaze.

"So Nikki Heat has her own playlist on your iPod?"

"Oh. Yeah. That." He smiles sheepishly and it makes her want to kiss the boyish grin from his handsome face. "Ah." He is being bashful and it is so absolutely adorable she almost can't stand it. "Every time I had any sort of writer's block I would put that playlist on and it would remind me of you and help me write."

She grows silent and thinks about what he really means. This playlist was for all the times they had grown frustrated with each other, for all the times that she had failed him as a muse because she had been wrestling with her own demons. But it was that hard road that brought them here, he'd been her guiding light through the darkness of the woods.

She scrolls through the list and places a soft kiss upon his lips.

"Dance with me?" she asks as she springs up to snap the iPod into the iHome that is sitting on his dresser and the sight of her standing in the middle of his bedroom in nothing but one of his shirts almost roots him to the spot. He moves to pull on his boxers.

"Of course."

She puts it on shuffle and he comes to meet her just as the first bars of the song drift into the room.

_When the rain is blowing in your face,_

_ And the whole world is on your case,_

_ I could offer you a warm embrace,_

_ To make you feel my love._

He has pressed his lips to one of her ears and is whisper-singing the song to her. His hot breath against it makes shivers gallop up and down her battle-bruised spine, even while her heart is spinning a slow waltz inside her chest, contracting and filling it up as he sings to her, making her feel like she might cry.

How could she have been so blind to it? And so headstrong and proud that she hadn't been willing to admit how desperately her heart needed his?

_When the evening shadows and the stars appear,_

_ And there is no one there to dry your tears,_

_ I could hold you for a million years,_

_ To make you feel my love?_

How many times had he saved her life? And now he was saving it again by taking her in his arms and making her whole, putting back together what the world had torn apart.

_I know you haven't made your mind up yet,_

_ But I would never do you wrong,_

_ I've known it from the moment that we met,_

_ No doubt in my mind where you belong._

Her chest grows even tighter and she feels the weight of her emotion pressing down upon it, forcing her breath out of her in a long, hitching sigh.

Those words. He had been willing to wait for her for so long, keeping himself at a distance, loving her in so many little ways each day. He was the boy who waited. She had glimpsed the scars of this sometimes when he glanced at her over the past night, caught the fact that he was still unsure as to weather she would shrink down and run away.

She gives his hand a little squeeze and raises her lips to his for a heart wrenchingly tender kiss. When they break apart the message in her eyes sends a thrill through him. _I'm here. To stay. My mind is made up. All I want is you._

_ I'd go hungry I'd go black and blue,_

_ I'd go crawling down the avenue,_

_ Know there's nothing that I wouldn't do_

_ To make you feel my love._

Just then his phone rings. He sighs into her.

"I have more important things to attend to than a phone call."

She rolls her eyes and he delights in the goofy half smile that engulfs her features as she swats him in the chest.

"Answer it. It might be Alexis." And then, a phrase that makes his heart leap, "I'm not going anywhere."

_The storms are raging on the rolling sea,_

_ And on the highway of regret,_

_ The winds of change are blowing wild and free,_

_ You ain't seen nothing like me yet._

He walks into the alcove and when he looks at the number he feels as if a bullet has hit him square in the chest and the shrapnel of it bounces around his insides and weakens him in the knees.

"Castle."

"I'm afraid we no longer have the upper hand Mr. Castle, the information I received from Roy has fallen into the wrong hands." Mr. Smith pauses on the other end of the line and it feels like an eternity of nausea to the writer on the other end. "They'll be coming for her. Despite the recent turn of events, they still want Kate Beckett dead, she has gotten herself too deep into this."

_Like hell_, Castle thinks angrily. _Like hell._ He isn't going to let anyone come in between the future he is sure him and Kate have together.

"If I were you, I would bring her somewhere off the grid, make her hard to find. They need to get the message that she is no longer a threat to them, or, even if she is, that she is going to make herself hard to find. They won't stop Mr. Castle. Not until she is dead or someone takes their Kingpin out. Protect her."

The phone clicks on the other end. Mr. Smith is gone. Castle peers into the bedroom at Kate through watery eyes and takes a beat to pull himself together for her.

_I could make you happy, make your dreams come true,_

_ Oh there's nothing that I wouldn't do,_

_ Go to the ends of the earth for you,_

_ To make you feel my love, to make you feel my love._

She smiles at him when he swoops back in and kisses her.

"I realized I forgot one before."

He looks at her curiously.

"The songs. They make sense now Castle. That's our language too. The songs make sense."

He feels his world crashing around him, because he can't imagine a life without her in it. She sees him force away a shadow that has flitted across his eyes.

"Come away with me."


End file.
